Tuesday, 31 May 2011

A senior Egyptian general admits that “virginity checks” were performed on women arrested at a demonstration this spring, the first such admission after previous denials by military authorities.

The allegations arose in an Amnesty International report, published weeks after the March 9 protest. It claimed female demonstrators were beaten, given electric shocks, strip-searched, threatened with prostitution charges and forced to submit to virginity checks.

At that time, Maj. Amr Imam said 17 women had been arrested but denied allegations of torture or “virginity tests.”

But now a senior general who asked not to be identified said the virginity tests were conducted and defended the practice.

“The girls who were detained were not like your daughter or mine,” the general said. “These were girls who had camped out in tents with male protesters in Tahrir Square, and we found in the tents Molotov cocktails and (drugs).”

The general said the virginity checks were done so that the women wouldn’t later claim they had been raped by Egyptian authorities.

“We didn’t want them to say we had sexually assaulted or raped them, so we wanted to prove that they weren’t virgins in the first place,” the general said. “None of them were (virgins).”

Okay, so none of the female arrestees are now virgins, and that’s evidence the police didn’t rape them? (Via Hot Air.)

In a marked shift from the Bush administration, President Obama’s Justice Department is aggressively investigating several big urban police departments for systematic civil rights abuses such as harassment of racial minorities, false arrests, and excessive use of force.

1. If the minimum wage is a good idea, shouldn’t unpaid internships be illegal as well? If not, why not?

2. Name the main arguments in favor of the legality of unpaid internships. Aren’t all of them equally good arguments for allowing people to work for wages greater than zero and less than the minimum wage?

The answer: Because the elites employ interns and plumbers, electricians, and mechanics employ helpers. (Via InstaPundit.)

Far fewer people died or were left homeless by last year's devastating earthquake than claimed by Haitian leaders, a report commissioned by the U.S. government has concluded -- challenging a central premise behind a multibillion-dollar aid and reconstruction effort.

The report, a copy of which was obtained Monday by The Associated Press, estimates that the death toll was between 46,000 and 85,000, far below the Haitian government's official figure of 316,000. The report was prepared for the U.S. Agency for International Development but has not yet been publicly released.

A former chairman of one of Egypt’s major banks was arrested Monday on charges of sexually abusing a maid at a Manhattan hotel, just weeks after the arrest of former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn on similar allegations, police said.

Mahmoud Abdel Salam Omar is accused of sexually abusing the maid at The Pierre, a luxury hotel near Central Park and Fifth Avenue on the Upper East Side, police said.

The maid was called to Omar’s room Sunday night to drop off tissues, police said. But once inside the 74-year-old’s room, police said Omar would not let her leave and touched her inappropriately. The encounter was not reported until Monday, police said.

Paul Browne, a spokesman for the New York City Police Department, said detectives found the complainant to be credible.

What kind of journalism is this? Let’s hear the immigration status of the accuser and the cost of the room.

I’m catching up on my Howie Carr listening. Last week he interviewed Newt Gingrich, who was still knee deep in his I’m-not-anti-Ryan cleanup. Gingrich stumbled into an idea that’s been bouncing around my brain for some time when he mentioned Christian Scientists’ exemption from the Obambicare mandate. If Christian Scientists (and the Amish) can’t be forced to buy health insurance, how can anyone else?

There is a far greater number of Americans who believe as a matter of conscience that the Constitution can’t mandate private health insurance payments than there are adherents to those sects. There is no reason not to respect those beliefs.

What we’re really talking about here is the distinction between an individual mandate and personal responsibility. I propose a formal opt-out wherein the citizen absolves government of responsibility for his health and the government releases the citizen from the mandate. That wouldn’t prohibit citizens from buying limited (cheaper!) health insurance of their own volition.